Prop. 224 serves its promoters

EXAMINER EDITORIAL WRITER

Published 4:00 am, Monday, May 4, 1998

1998-05-04 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA -- CALIFORNIANS have learned not to swallow whole the labels given to initiatives by their self-interested sponsors. So the "Cost Savings and Taxpayer Protection Amendment" has to be examined for what that label does not tell us.

The backers, mainly employed by Caltrans, claim their plan would save the state millions of dollars by making it harder to award contracts to private engineering and design firms for state-funded work. Such contracting out would be prohibited if the state controller determines that civil servants can do it for less. A rigged system of comparing contract costs with the "additional direct costs" for state employees to do the work is set up to make such determinations. And for contracts exceeding $50,000, competitive bidding must replace the present practice of negotiated pricing.

We like the idea of requiring more competitive bidding to curb cronyism and help the state get more bang for the taxpayer's buck. But Prop. 224 is a bureaucratic monstrosity that would cost millions to administer and could strip cities and school districts of control over local projects.

Under the mechanism for discouraging private contracts, the state controller would face thousands of loaded cost comparisons for which it is not equipped. The legislative analyst estimates it would cost the controller $2 million a year to do this work. That would be all right if as a result the state realized greater savings. But the legislative analyst says that prospect is too uncertain to forecast.

Maintaining additional battalions of state engineers to do the $150 million worth of work now contracted out, and letting them sit on the payroll doing crossword puzzles during slack seasons, would be a waste of taxpayers' money. We envision costly delays in making earthquake retrofits and building badly needed schools as the state machinery backs up. Prop. 224 is a winner only for Caltrans engineers. The rest of us should vote no.